Esther J. Cepeda: Obama’s message wrong

CHICAGO — Tone deafness is a bipartisan
ailment. It seems to strike when least expected, with painful consequences.

Take Republican presidential candidate
Mitt Romney’s wife, Ann, who’s recently had a few verbal fumbles. She turned
off some Hispanics gathered at the Republican National Convention’s Latino
Coalition luncheon when she referred to Puerto Ricans as “you people.” Her
defenders, and even some of her detractors, were level-headed enough to note
that she’s not prone to arrogance or using coded language, she simply uses the
phase frequently in her everyday speech.

But whether it’s said to a Good Morning
America journalist, as happened last July during the height of the furor for
the Romneys to make public their past tax returns, or to members of a
special-interest group, it’s time for Mrs. Romney to drop the phrase from her
vocabulary.

Though I generally like Ann Romney, she
really ticked me off the day after the “you people” incident when she told a
reporter that women were considering voting for Mitt Romney because “it’s time
for the grown-up to come.”

There are many legitimate ways to knock
President Obama — his current unique selling point seems to be “I’m not Mitt
Romney” springs to mind — but implying that Obama is too immature to run the
country is just plain stupid.

But, never one to let an opportunity to
disappoint those who voted for his integrity in 2008, here comes President
Obama, trying to shore up his street cred with young voters by filming a video
ad for Internet coverage of the Democratic National Convention with Harold and
Kumar, the White Castle-munching, skirt-chasing, Santa Claus-shooting, world
famous pot-smoking movie characters.

Don’t get me wrong, I love Harold and
Kumar. But “Harold and Kumar Get Silly with President Obama”? No one needs to
see that. I don’t care how deep in the pits the president’s popularity is among
young voters, Obama didn’t need to stoop to this — especially when it plays
right into the image of him being a hypocrite who says one thing, then does the
opposite.

This is the guy who, according to
marijuana-legalization activists, has shut down more legal medical marijuana
providers in less than four years than former President George W. Bush did in
eight years, and ramped up federal attacks on medical marijuana to include not
just the Justice Department but also the Internal Revenue Service and the
Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.

The whole point behind the Obama
administration’s digital outreach strategy has been to engage youth in
authentic interaction via virtual town hall meetings. But even though questions
about marijuana decriminalization or legalization have been at the very top of
every Web-based “listening” event Obama’s ever participated in, he has been
consistent in refusing to address the issue in any meaningful way.

“It’s a pretty slick campaign piece to
try to win back this demographic,” Neill Franklin, a retired Baltimore
narcotics cop and executive director of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, an
organization advocating for the legalization of certain drugs, told me. “There
he is with Harold and Kumar, representatives of the ‘typical’ — even though
it’s not true — stoner sucking on soft drinks and eating pizza because they’ve
got the munchies from smoking weed, but never really saying it.

“That’s just not being honest,
especially for someone who has been avoiding answering questions about a
legitimate topic of debate that crosses so many age, race, cultural and
economic groups. To the elderly, to people with diseases like cancer or
glaucoma, and to other people who could get arrested and tagged with criminal
records for doing the same thing the president himself did (in high school and
college, by his own admission), this issue is not a laughing matter. I resent
it.”

Maybe Ann Romney was right: On his youth
outreach, President Obama needs to grow up.

ESTHER
J. CEPEDA is a columnist for the Washington Post Writers Group.

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